KOLKHORST RECOMMENDS AUDIT FOR BLINN COLLEGE
After a bill that will allocate more money to the Blinn College Bryan campus, Senator Lois Kolkhorst has recommended Blinn officials to obtain a financial audit.
A bill by Rep. John Raney would require Blinn to allocate its funding based on student contact hours, and with the Bryan campus having the largest enrollment, that campus would receive largest amount of state funding.
Raney believes since 70% of the students attend the Bryan campus, that the majority of the funding should go there, and believes that the Brenham campus should be self-supporting, and not use money allocated for the Bryan campus, believing that it should be funded with “contact hours” instead of splitting the money equally.
Blinn has received 26.9 million dollars in the last fiscal year ending last August, which for the Bryan campus, would mean a total for the spring semester to be almost $2.3 million dollars.
Contact hours on the Brenham campus are expected to be about $490,000 hours.
Kolkhorst noted that Washington County uses property taxes specified for Blinn College’s operations, so a balance needs to be established there.
She goes on to say that the Brenham campus needs attention, with hundreds of students are turned away from the school due to lack of housing.
There are also rumors in the legislature that would exclude Waller County from Blinn’s service area. Kolkhorst is hoping that Blinn leadership will make all the proper decisions.
I do wonder about Raney’s bill. Does that mean that only the Bryan campus will pay for the new Bryan campus to be built? Perhaps, Bryan Blinn should be careful about what it wishes for.
Ka. “If you were a young student…….” and so called “where nothing is happening” comments.
Are you going to school to get away from parents even tho they are probably footing the bill;
or are you going to school to learn? What better place than “where nothing else is happening” to be able to concentrate on your education ?
As for “Does Kolkhorst understand……..” Kolkhorst UNDERSTANDS better than you will after attending both Blinn’s and maybe Texas A & M also. Kolkhorst is a native of the Brazos Valley communities, and a six time elected representative of the adult taxpaying people of the area.
What’s on your resume?
Larry, from a mature stand point your right, but kids that have been at home with mom and dad all their life want to experience fun at the same time as spending their parents money. They are chomping at the bits to go out and see the world. Brenham isn’t a shiny beacon on a hill for them. The Bryan campus exploding is the proof. As far as my resume, I started an oil and gas industry related company in 1982 managed it through all the ups and downs of the industry and economy for 33 years, and am debt free. How about you?
Ka.
I’m just a lowly CPA for the last 40 years who grew up in Washington County, a Blinn alumnus, still pay property taxes in Washington County. Spent 8 years in internal auditing at a 4 year Texas State university.
I’ll go back under my rock.
Larry, I never said you were under a rock. You did seem to express that a person who has been in politics a long time is someone who knows better than everyone else. I call them career politicians, and am in favor of term limits.
If I may get into this, I would like to make a comment. Many students attend the Bryan Campus so they can tell their friends and relatives, “Yes, I go to Texas A&M,” hoping that it will be true in a year or two. Others live closer to Bryan than to Brenham. Still others find programs available in Bryan that aren’t in Brenham, just as students go to Brenham to participate in band or sports or smaller classes or more personalized learning experiences or they want to experience dorm living. Yes, many students want to go to college to have fun, and that usually boils down to partying. And that my friend, can be done anywhere.
Freda, rural country kids while in highschool have fun getting together and partying out in a pasture. I can’t help believing that as they get older, excpecially of the age of 21 when they can legally drink udalt beverages, there place of fellowship is not at church but at places with loud country music and dance floors and where there is a lot of people about the same age and opposite sex from all over the country. Isn’t the rate high for kids that never graduate from collage ?
Board of Trustees: here is your plan:
1. move distance education to Brenham where it belongs. A good portion of Brenham instructors teach in the distance education program but yet the contact hours and tuition is counted for the Bryan campus and the cost of these instructors are charged to Blinn Brenham. That inflates contact hours and money for Bryan and loss of income for Brenham.
2. Lay-off all deans and department heads. Go back to using Division Chairs. Do it now before a new President makes things worse or gives them all a raise.
3. Build more housing in Brenham.
4. Raney’s plan is racist. More students of color attend Brenham Blinn and Bryan Blinn is mainly white. Attack it.
5. Lay off all deans and department heads. Go back to using Division Chairs. Do it now before a new President makes things worse or gives them all a raise.
6. Put Blinn Bryan on a payment plan to pay back all of the money invested in it when it could not pay its way.
All have good points, I’m not sure about the book store idea though. I do wonder how We the Washington Co. Tax payers are/were going to benifit with a Bryan campus. If you know please shine the light on this for me. Thanks !
Yes, many thanks to the board members of long ago that began the Bryan campus. As visionaries, they knew this was needed and that it would also be a good revenue source. As is expected, things change and the Bryan campus has exceeded expectations. But maybe there is a more pressing reality behind this legislation to change the distribution of state funding. Cutting costs across the board in education to shore up the pension and benefit funds for current anf retired employees is a focus point of the legislature. If major cutbacks are not implemented very soon, this fund will fall short in the near future. This has been known by the statehouse for more than a decade. Minor cutbacks began on this campus a few years ago by eliminating the employees in housekeeping, groundskeeping, etc. and contracting these areas. We now have more part time instructors than now than in the schools history. There have been no cutbacks in administration, that sector increased. Change is inevitable, and the days of lifetime benefits and pensions will soon be nearly non- existant. The big question is, who will retain these luxuries and who will lose?
Of course Mr. Raney favors most of the money be allocated based on the student enrollment at Bryan or Brenham campuses as they are now. Mr. Raney sells textbooks to college students in College Station through his Aggieland Bookstore. This bill that he authored is pretty much self-serving. He would benefit from the continued growth in the student base in Bryan, as they would most likely patronize his business.
While I appreciate the growth of the Bryan campus, it was only possible due to the commitment of the Blinn College organization and taxpayers. it was an investment in their mission. Many of the students from the BCS area attended Blinn in Brenham before enrolling in TAMU. The idea was to build the campus in BCS and alleviate the demands for housing and services in Brenham. Since BCS had TAMU, the student base would benefit from the existing support base in BCS. Blinn would benefit from the increased enrollment and tuition.
To now decide that the Bryan campus should reap the benefits without the sweat equity is near-sighted. Blinn taxpayers supported the original concept and their tax money still supports Blinn College in BCS and Brenham.
TAMU saw the same benefits when they made the decision to link with Blinn College. Students could go to Blinn in Bryan and take their first two years of college credits at lower rates. They could benefit from smaller class size. They could build their transcript to allow them to enter TAMU. The benefits to TAMU was less staff, the students would take the remedial classes at Blinn and this would relieve the pressure on parking, budget and housing at TAMU. This led to a dramatic increase in enrollment in Blinn at Bryan.
In recent years, the growth of the Bryan Campus of Blinn College has become the “gorilla in the room”. The Bryan Campus longs to be independent or have greater autonomy. This could be resolved by using the same organization as say the Texas A&M University System. The System makes the overall program decisions and budgets for each of the other campuses. The individual campuses make local decisions on staffing, programming and such.
At some point, Blinn College will have to resolve this issue by adopting a management or organizational style. But I believe the taxpayers of Washington County, the ones that carried the debt and still pay the taxes today, should be the ones to decide how to allocate the funding to benefit the system over the long term, not some retail merchant.
Just to clarify, John Raney does own the Texas Aggieland Bookstores, with two locations in College Station.
I agree with Tom. Blinn College invested a ton of money to get the community college going at Bryan when Bryan did not want to pony-up. Blinn spent a lot of money getting that campus to where it is today. The Bryan campus sure did not make money in the beginning.
If colleges/universities are going to have to invest an lose money to get new campuses going and then never get to receive any benefits, why would they have an incentive in trying to open more campuses and make college more accessible to more people?
It’s sad, but I would like to take advanced computer classes to further my career and I have to drive to College Station to do it. If I want to get any kind of IT degree, College Station is where I have to go!! Try doing that working two jobs and raising a child!! It would be easier to take them here!
I see Rainy’s point, why should the students at the Bryan campus support the Brenham campus. Does Kolkhorst understand that the facilities at the Bryan campus need improvements ? Even if there were more new dorms available, if you were a young student, where would you rather go, Brenham Texas where nothing is happening, or BCS where there is much more to do and see happening ?
Just something to think about….Blinn’s Bryan campus didn’t materialize out of thin air. There were no Bryan Blinn students before Blinn invested money in Bryan. So where did the money come from during the many, many years it took to grow to the size it is now? I believe Blinn College has done a good job of balancing where money should be spent. Is it out of balance now based on students? Probably. Was it out of balance when the Bryan campus started? Definitely. Blinn has taken the first step toward building a new Bryan campus by acquiring land off 2818. Let’s see that plan take shape.